Users of iTunes U, the free educational content channel inside iTunes, will have a lot more elementary education material to choose from -- the states of Arizona, Florida, Maine, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Utah have all added some of their K-12 material to the mix, and a number of school districts and museums from those states have also contributed videos and audio recordings.
Plus, it's a great way to distribute student work to a much larger audience. You can find most of the new content under the "K-12" tab on the iTunes U homepage within iTunes.
One of the hidden gems of Apple.com is the collection of free web seminars available 24/7 that cover a wide range of topics and applications. A few weeks ago, Mat posted about the iWork for Business seminar, but a lot of other new seminars have been posted recently.
While a lot of the newest additions are aimed at OS X Leopard Server users or for business users, many of the tips and techniques can be applied for home users too. If none of the new seminars strike your fancy, the existing library of seminars offers some really nice introductions for creating podcasts, using Final Cut Studio or Aperture, and managing a Mac-based network.
Although the video seminars are free, registration is required.
At Macworld Expo in January, I talked to a guy at a booth who was demoing a hands-on iPhone training product. The developer, Saied Ghaffari, believes there are three types of people:
Clickers -- like most TUAW readers; people who take any application, click buttons and menus, and learn the app themselves
Non-clickers -- people who think they'll break something if they click or tap a button
Middle -- people who need some assistance in getting started in learning an application
Saied's company, It's About Time Products, develops products for the middle and non-clicker markets. They've introduced a Flash-based iPhone training application called It's About Time to learn iPhone that is available online ($24.95) now and at Apple Stores ($29.95) on June 23rd.
Rather than a typical "watch what I'm doing" screencast, It's About Time to learn iPhone uses a click-to-learn approach. You watch Saied demonstrate how to use an iPhone function, and then use the virtual iPhone to practice what you've seen.
The app has online notes so you don't have to write your own, and a full list of tips and tricks. Automatic updates are also part of the program, which works on Macs and PCs.
Today Apple posted the schedule for Apple Camp. Apple Camp is held at Apple retail stores for kids 8-12 to go learn about creative things like: making presentations with Keynote, taking and managing photos with iPhoto, creating music with GarageBand, and making movies with iMovie.
Each sessions lasts about 3 hours and is available at all Apple retail locations. Kids attending will receive a DVD or CD with their creations on it, field guide, t-shirt, and will be able to get other giveaways. Best of all, Apple Camp is free though registration is required.
Apple is offering "a free 8GB iPod touch ($299) to college students who buy a qualifying Mac (MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iMac, Mac Pro)."
VentureBeat goes further, contending that putting Apple's mobile platform in the hands of students practically ensures its dominance in the marketplace. "You can kiss the desktop computer goodbye," MG Siegler writes. "It's time to start training the young minds of today about the future of computing: mobile."
Instead of an iPod touch, students can opt for an 8GB iPod nano, but it's hard to see why anybody would want to do this with the soon-to-be-launched App Store.
The promotion ends September 15.
Thanks Eliot, Chris, Bert, Matt, and everyone who sent this in!
You might have heard that Microsoft Research has released WorldWide Telescope (WWT), it's software to devour the universe whole provide a fun way to browse the planets and stars.
The BBC mentioned that you can run WWT on your Mac ... so long as you have Windows on your Mac. Sigh. VMWare helpfully gave the system a try, though, and found it worked great (and even posted a video about it.)
I fired up the ol' Boot Camp and saw it wasn't bad. It boasts high-resolution photography of many parts of the sky, and is reasonably easy to use (for a Microsoft product). There were some weird, annoying flicker problems, but I'll chalk that up to the fact that it's beta software on a MacBook with a pokey graphics card.
As an amateur astronomer with his own 10-inch Dob (that's right, ladies), I tend to use astronomy software less as a casual browsing tool, but more to find interesting things in the sky on a particular night. And for that, WWT ain't great. You won't find any satellites (like Iridium flares) in WWT. Worst of all -- there's no horizon I could easily find.(Found it, thanks to commenter dh!) So good luck trying to find that fuzzy thing next to the blue thing when it's under your feet.
The Mac, however, is blessed with a great variety of native astronomy tools, most of which are free. Stellarium is excellent, free planetarium software. It's worth noting that Google Earth has a spiffy sky tool built-in, too. Last but not least, Starry Night Pro is the king of all astronomy software (and my favorite), but is a little spendy at $150.
Years ago, Macs didn't even acknowledge the presence of Windows networks, which made those LAN wine-and-cheese parties pretty awkward. Now, however, OS X machines are exemplary network citizens, and apparently can even manage Windows workstations under the right circumstances.
TidBITS linked to a roundtable discussion at Cornell University, where Philip Halcomb, of Cornell's Mann Library ITS staff, demonstrated managing user accounts in Active Directory. Now, this wouldn't be very exciting, except for the fact that he was using Mac OS X Workgroup Manager to do it. Sweet.
Phil's part starts at about 7:30. It's a long QuickTime video, too -- almost an hour -- but for IT folks, especially in an education environment, the roundtable series is a must-see.
Hot for Hindi? Up for learning Uyghur? Wild about Welsh? LifeClever tipped us off to the fact that there are 926 free language training podcasts currently available in the iTunes Store. A quick glance at the available podcasts shows that you can learn 39 languages from Arabic to Yiddish with the help of your iPod or iPhone.
To find this treasure trove of linguistic goodness, launch iTunes, pop into the iTunes Store, click on the Browse link, and navigate to Podcasts > Education > Language Courses.
What am I going to learn on my summer vacation? I'm waffling between Sexy Spanish and Latinum. This is a great way to get your kids to learn a language and keep them occupied during that long, hot road trip to Wally World this summer.
For (let's say) "phans" of Crayon Physics, Phun 3.5 is a similar kind of physics simulator created by Emil Ernerfeldt for his thesis at Umeå University, Sweden. Not only is it Swedish, but it's just been released for the Mac.
Sure, it's rough-around-the-edges, and it follows pretty much none of the Mac's interface or key-combination conventions, but it's sure a fun (with an F) toy. Phun is Universal Binary, and freeware.
Apple Insider is reporting that the New York City Department of Education has put all shipments of Macs to schools on complete hold while they're apparently waiting for Apple to fix a Wifi connectivity issue with OS X (which should be fixed with the 10.5.3 update). And Apple is apparently scrambling to get it worked out -- they've sent an apologetic email to faculty and have asked schools to try and separate any orders of computers that won't need wireless (that will use a regular ethernet hookup) to ship now.
Unfortunately, there's no hint of exactly how many Macs we're talking about here, but if this is a substantial number of computers, and word gets out causing other organizations to delay shipments as well, Apple will feel more and more pressure to get the problem fixed ASAP. Bad news for the kids who want Macs in New York City (that's the DoE's seal on the right, in case you didn't recognize it), but good news for anyone else having this problem -- Apple's working hard on a fix.
The ongoing expansion of edu-world content in iTunes continues with Friday's addition of PBS to iTunes U (direct link); teaching support videos and instructional content from KQED, WETA, WNET thirteen, WGBH and more. Video clips that illustrate science, geography or history (including segments from Ken Burns' documentary The War) are accompanied by PDF lesson plans and educator's guides -- awful handy!
While all the iTunes U PBS content is free to download and use, the PBS shows already on iTunes remain for-pay. Too bad -- I suppose I'll have to pay $4.99 a show if I'm going to grab some NOVA episodes and settle in.
Although I am certainly not a designer, I love and appreciate good iconography, typography, and other graphical elements. The beauty of the OS is just one of many factors that pushed me over the edge to embracing life as a full-time OS X user in the first place.
That said, the process of actually creating my own icons has always struck me as arduous and overwhelming. I'm actually pretty good at Photoshop, but I can't draw a straight line to save my life and that has always scared me off from investigating any further into icon creation.
That's why I'm so excited about the new project from icon designer extraordinaire, Sebastiaan de With. Icon Resource is a new site/service that features high quality screencasts that teach the and explain how to create modern icons using Photoshop. According to Sebastiaan, the screencasts aren't aimed at designers, but instead "intermediate computer users," which makes it perfect for someone like myself.
For € 95 (about $150 USD), users can get a complete IconResource pack that contains screencasts covering not only the history of icon design and icon standards and guidelines, but the entire icon creation process from beginning to end. The screencasts are available in HD or in iPhone/iPod size for portable watching. Additionally, Photoshop files for each tutorial are included and Sebastian offers written documentation as well.
The price point might be a turnoff to some users, but the price is actually on-par with what I have paid for tutorials/books for other design/graphic oriented topics in the past. Sebastiaan has a preview video available on his site, so if you are interested in icon design, check it out!
It's not often that we get to do an advice column here, but let's see how this goes. An email arrived at the office just the other day... Dear Aunt TUAW,
I work in the engineering college of a large private university, where I manage 6 Mac-based labs. I just tried to order myself a brand new Mac Pro to replacing my aging PowerMac G5 and was told by my dean that the college would no longer be buying Macs because they had absolutely no place in the engineering industry. He said that from this point forward, the college "would only be buying Windows computers, period!"
I know that he is wrong and that there are engineers that use Macs professionally and I can give a few examples to support that. If I am going to win this argument I'm going to need a lot of proof.
Signed,
Mac-lorn Admin
Dear Mac-lorn Admin,
Darling, didn't you realize the Mac Pro is a Windows machine, and a darned speedy one? Last time I checked, Boot Camp + Mac Pro = a Windows dream! The adult in us loves the reliability and UNIX backbone, but the kid in us loves the GUI and tasty frosting! Having a single machine that can do double or triple duty with Mac apps, BSD/Linux engineering power and Windows compatibility would be the envy of any right-minded academician.
Still, we know that logic isn't going to sway that mean ole dean of yours. TUAW readers, can you help Mac-lorn? Leave us your testimonials about using Macs in your professional lives -- particularly in engineering or in higher ed -- in the comments.
Tuesday's launch of Xsan 2 coincided with the discontinuation of Apple's Xserve RAID Enterprise storage system. For shopper's at the Apple Store for Education, it appears that the Xserve in general has been completely removed as well. Although refurbished Xserve servers still come up under a search (as do Xserve parts and accessories), the product page for Xserve is conspicuously missing.
Take a look at these screen shots, one is from the regular Apple Store, the other is from Apple Store for Education:
Where art thou, Xserve?
We're not sure if this was just a simple oversight or a sign of trends to come. It's possible Apple wasn't seeing the sales for the Xserve product at the Education store to warrant whatever hardware discount they might have offered. I also think it's possible that schools interested in getting an Xserve setup from Apple could probably do better the direct sales route, as opposed to using the web-based one-stop shop.
Whatever the reason, it is a bizarre exclusion -- and the first time I can recall an entire product being removed from one of Apple's pre-labeled storefronts.
If you do any work in Office you've probably been waiting for the latest update for a couple of years now. Especially if you're on an Intel machine or have struggled with Entourage's funky interface (or is that just me?). Last week Microsoft released Office 2008 for the Mac, and it's a doozy of an update. Being a universal binary is really the least of the changes. This is a complete overhaul, with a ton of UI changes and workflow improvements. Amanda Lefebvre takes us on a whirlwind tour of some new features, and explains the difference between the three different editions of Office.
Users of iTunes U, the free educational content channel inside iTunes, will have a lot more elementary education material to choose from -- the states of Arizona, Florida, Maine, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Utah have all added some of their K-12 material to the mix, and a number of school districts and museums from those states have also contributed videos and audio recordings.
One of the hidden gems of Apple.com is the collection of 
Today Apple posted the schedule for 
Apple is launching its 
You might have heard that Microsoft Research has released 
Hot for Hindi? Up for learning Uyghur? Wild about Welsh? 
For (let's say) "phans" of 
Apple Insider is reporting that 
The ongoing expansion of edu-world content in iTunes continues with Friday's addition of 
Although I am certainly not a designer, I love and appreciate good iconography, typography, and other graphical elements. The beauty of the OS is just one of many factors that pushed me over the edge to embracing life as a full-time OS X user in the first place.
